Busy beautician but still not covering her wage?

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JUST BE NICE

Hi I’m not a manager, I am just employed but thought I would comment, hope that’s ok. LVL lashes if you are using Nouveau brand I would charge minimum £35/40. Can be done in 45. Spray tan £20 in 15/20 mins. Apparently a therapist should be making three times their hourly rate for the employee to make a profit properly. X

Well-Known Member

Most of the timings all look about right - you could maybe knock 5 mins of the brow shape and tint, but it sounds as though these are the timings that she needs to deliver excellent client satisfaction.

You need to spend some management time understanding the beauty side of the business: timings, costs, premium services, clean up. Look at what treatments are booked as combined hair and beauty visits. Are clients mostly coming in for the works - brows, hair, lashes, nails all on the same day? Or is your beauty service running independently? It's important to understand. Go through the bookings carefully, maybe start by analysing the lash services.

You should have an express lash service which lasts up to 2 weeks, no infills with this service and try and get this down to 45 mins max. Then individuals at 90 mins and Russian at 120 mins. Infills with both of these services.

Change the way you offer lash services. A lot of lash techs make their money with infills. Only infill your own work, not another salon. Offer a 30 min infill service for £25 if they return within 2 weeks. Charge almost as much as a full set for more than 2 weeks (maybe discount by £5) booking a maximum of 45 mins and refuse to accept bookings for infills after 22days. Design a lash treatment menu which explains about aftercare and your lash services.

Tell clients you never expect them to book in for a full set unless they've had a break in wearing extensions. Explain that you heavily discount the cost of the initial set because you make your money on returning services - and only offer full sets of lashes on off peak days/times. Reserve your peak demand times for infills and tell your clients that you are very sorry that they didn't rebook for infills when they needed to, but unfortunately you can't afford to disappoint 4 clients needing lash infills because you are doing a full set.

I always book an hour for LVL even though I'm very experienced. It gives me the results that clients return for and I charge more than other salons. And I sell an aftercare serum. Lash lifting in theory works very well with hair because it's a treatment with a 6-8 week return time, just like hair services. You could try offering a hair and lash lift promotion which matches your existing lash lifting price and add £10 to your standalone lash lift service. Make sure all your hairdressers have lash lifts - and can talk about these services. Run the promotion for 3 weeks and count up how many new clients you introduced to lash lifting - and how many regular lash lifting clients booked in for hair. (You don't want to get just lifted lashes wet, hot, or steamy so this needs careful discussion as a team).

With spray tan I assume this includes clean up time - talk to her about maybe only booking spray tans on particular days and trying to book 2-3 spray tans back to back to benefit from efficiencies. Spray tanning doesn't work well with other services so maybe push this into low demand times/days. Or have dynamic pricing - charge more on some days/times.

Regarding her pay - you are drastically underpaying her and you need to address this or risk losing her. You need to look at what you can offer to make her feel valued. Free hair colour, cut and blow dry every 6 weeks? Professional hair care products bought at cost price?

Moving forward, everyone looks at their actual hourly pay. If you can't afford to pay her more money per hour you need to cut her hours to fund a pay rise. If I've done my sums right you should be able to pay her £7.70 per hour for a 30 hour week without increasing your salary cost. Set her a target. Tell her that when she hits this as a minimum for 6 weeks in a row, you'll add 2 hours.

I've recently decided not to fill a vacancy. I spoke to my team and said that there would be more hours for those that wanted more hours and more pay for those who wanted more responsibility. I had some staff who didn't want more hours and weren't able to justify a pay increase. I need them to be more flexible with their hours and more productive. I've had to find other ways to incentivise them - free massage and free training from me has worked very well. It's cost me bookable hours, but has saved me management heartache.

Well-Known Member

Naw, she's a beauty therapist with 2 years experience offering a wide range of services. A nail tech can do a full set of acrylics in 60 mins but she's not a nail tech and you're not a nail salon. You're a hair and beauty business - or a hair salon with a beauty room.

If you are talking about calgel, 90 mins is fair for gel sculpting. It's a premium product. You could look at offering tips which is quicker. I'm not familiar with cal gel - I use bio sculpture which is similar. Bio sculpture takes longer than gel polish so you charge extra for it. Clients expect this.

You need to compare apples with apples. If you want quick speedy services you need to buy the quick speedy products, not the premium products which sell on longevity, nail health and expert knowledge - not speed and cheap pricing!

JUST BE NICE

Most of the timings all look about right - you could maybe knock 5 mins of the brow shape and tint, but it sounds as though these are the timings that she needs to deliver excellent client satisfaction.

You need to spend some management time understanding the beauty side of the business: timings, costs, premium services, clean up. Look at what treatments are booked as combined hair and beauty visits. Are clients mostly coming in for the works - brows, hair, lashes, nails all on the same day? Or is your beauty service running independently? It's important to understand. Go through the bookings carefully, maybe start by analysing the lash services.

You should have an express lash service which lasts up to 2 weeks, no infills with this service and try and get this down to 45 mins max. Then individuals at 90 mins and Russian at 120 mins. Infills with both of these services.

Change the way you offer lash services. A lot of lash techs make their money with infills. Only infill your own work, not another salon. Offer a 30 min infill service for £25 if they return within 2 weeks. Charge almost as much as a full set for more than 2 weeks (maybe discount by £5) booking a maximum of 45 mins and refuse to accept bookings for infills after 22days. Design a lash treatment menu which explains about aftercare and your lash services.

Tell clients you never expect them to book in for a full set unless they've had a break in wearing extensions. Explain that you heavily discount the cost of the initial set because you make your money on returning services - and only offer full sets of lashes on off peak days/times. Reserve your peak demand times for infills and tell your clients that you are very sorry that they didn't rebook for infills when they needed to, but unfortunately you can't afford to disappoint 4 clients needing lash infills because you are doing a full set.

I always book an hour for LVL even though I'm very experienced. It gives me the results that clients return for and I charge more than other salons. And I sell an aftercare serum. Lash lifting in theory works very well with hair because it's a treatment with a 6-8 week return time, just like hair services. You could try offering a hair and lash lift promotion which matches your existing lash lifting price and add £10 to your standalone lash lift service. Make sure all your hairdressers have lash lifts - and can talk about these services. Run the promotion for 3 weeks and count up how many new clients you introduced to lash lifting - and how many regular lash lifting clients booked in for hair. (You don't want to get just lifted lashes wet, hot, or steamy so this needs careful discussion as a team).

With spray tan I assume this includes clean up time - talk to her about maybe only booking spray tans on particular days and trying to book 2-3 spray tans back to back to benefit from efficiencies. Spray tanning doesn't work well with other services so maybe push this into low demand times/days. Or have dynamic pricing - charge more on some days/times.

Regarding her pay - you are drastically underpaying her and you need to address this or risk losing her. You need to look at what you can offer to make her feel valued. Free hair colour, cut and blow dry every 6 weeks? Professional hair care products bought at cost price?

Moving forward, everyone looks at their actual hourly pay. If you can't afford to pay her more money per hour you need to cut her hours to fund a pay rise. If I've done my sums right you should be able to pay her £7.70 per hour for a 30 hour week without increasing your salary cost. Set her a target. Tell her that when she hits this as a minimum for 6 weeks in a row, you'll add 2 hours.

I've recently decided not to fill a vacancy. I spoke to my team and said that there would be more hours for those that wanted more hours and more pay for those who wanted more responsibility. I had some staff who didn't want more hours and weren't able to justify a pay increase. I need them to be more flexible with their hours and more productive. I've had to find other ways to incentivise them - free massage and free training from me has worked very well. It's cost me bookable hours, but has saved me management heartache.

They have many perks. Each staff member gets £100 worth of services per month and products at cost price already. I just feel like they don't understand the income side of things....which is my job to get that across. This info will be invaluable thanks!

So in terms of crossover we have alot of clients who have hair + nails and lashes (both individual and lvl)

Average/sporadic in brow tinting, then worst up for hair and beauty crossover is waxing and tanning. X

Well-Known Member

That sounds about right. Body hair grows in a monthly cycle. It takes 3 weeks to grow from the follicle to the surface of the skin and then you need about a week for it to grow long enough to be waxed. So waxing isn't in sync with hairdressing services. Waxing is a big income generator - usually clients return monthly. In January you'll still be booking Hollywoods.

Waxing and tanning don't mix.

You can't spray tan just coloured hair and vice versa. - so although tanning is an in demand service in a hair salon, you can't book a double appointment.

JUST BE NICE

That sounds about right. Body hair grows in a monthly cycle. It takes 3 weeks to grow from the follicle to the surface of the skin and then you need about a week for it to grow long enough to be waxed. So waxing isn't in sync with hairdressing services.

Waxing and tanning don't mix.

You can't spray tan just coloured hair and vice versa. - so although tanning is an in demand service in a hair salon, you can't book a double appointment.

I've also decided to up her pay. According to nmw this goes up to 7.70 anyway in April so I was thinking Approx £8ph?
and give her management responsibilities too which will help me as I'm off on maternity leave anyway.

So I need to revise the lashes, and increase CalGel to 28 and increase lash lift and tint to 35?

Well-Known Member

Lash lift & tint seems cheap to me at £35.00?
I charge £45.00.....but always try to get them to have the brows ‘reworked’ at the same time, for an all in price of £55.00.
They have between 1 - 1 1/2 hours for this service

JUST BE NICE

Lash lift & tint seems cheap to me at £35.00?
I charge £45.00.....but always try to get them to have the brows ‘reworked’ at the same time, for an all in price of £55.00.
They have between 1 - 1 1/2 hours for this service

Well-Known Member

I mainly do hair, for which I charge approximately £45.00 per hour.
If I were to charge less for my lash lifts, there would be no point in offering this service.
I do not try to compete with a lower price point for this reason.
If my clients want the quality service that I offer, then all is good

JUST BE NICE

I mainly do hair, for which I charge approximately £45.00 per hour.
If I were to charge less for my lash lifts, there would be no point in offering this service.
I do not try to compete with a lower price point for this reason.
If my clients want the quality service that I offer, then all is good

New Member

Hi, sorry this is an old post I'm commenting on, but I just read it. I get what you're saying, I own a hair & beauty salon ( I'm a beauty therapist) and the hair side makes so much more money than beauty per hour, so I have questioned why my beauty therapist( and me) weren't earning so much myself, but I'm comparing it to my very busy & popular hair stylist who earns lots!! So I guess you earn a lot yourself per hour being a hair stylist,and this is why it appears your therapist earns little. We've just raised our prices, to give u an example, Calgel overlays from £25 to £27, we book out 45 mins to one hour, this is our least profitable treatment to do BUT we can't charge £43 per hour on nails or we just wouldn't get nail clients. Facials, waxing & massage are biggest earners for me, as we charge £40-£44 per hour for these. If you don't have a room then u can't offer these, so if I was you I would be trying to up-sell treatments to clients to add on, such as adding a mini pedi or brow wax to Calgel nails for X amount, so client maybe saves a couple of pounds, but you're making a few more with not much more effort. Add - on offers tend to work well for me. Sorry if this is late and you're sorted already! Thought it might help!